Thursday, May 22, 2008

So I did some cursory Facebook searches and found that there are actually a couple hundred youngish Jewish kids around, either through Jgrads, YPD, or GesherCity.

I recognize the difficulty of coordinating between groups, resources agendas... etc. maybe there needs to be a 'career fair' model for all the groups trying to court us so that we could determine which groups really align with the type of involvement we want to have, from purely social to more religious or social justice focuses.

As I see it, the people would be the only reason to keep us here. STL doesn't have the population or activity diversity or density of NYC, DC, Chi-town, or LA. It doesn't have the beaches of the West Coast or the weather of the South.

The city's culture is a little incongruent with the majority of young Jews (if you don't vote Democrat when you are young, you have no soul, if you don't vote Republican when you are old, you have no savings) so really you have a few strikes against you.

Perhaps most challenging about St. Louis is simply the layout. There are little pockets or neighborhoods spread out over a fairly vast area considering the relatively small population. We are spread out across regions from downtown and the actual city of St. Louis (Vassup!) out to the depths of West County (Ish don't sink so). Nothing against West County, tax base depletion aside, but people move out there to start families, not communities.

Anyways, the point is just that we need an urban JCC. Wait. . .is that the point? Perhaps its a point. We need a rallying point somewhere that is fairly central, where people want to be, where they are comfortable being. A place where they can drop through after work, have a beer (that isn't yellow fizzy water) or a water. . . whatever.

Let me try that again. We need a place, physical or digital, where people exchange ideas and connect, because contact is key for a community.